Elastic cords with hooks are widely used for tying down articles or releasably attaching them to various carriers, surfaces and cargo beds. The conventional arrangement is usually referred to as a bungee cord, and has a hook made of heavy wire with the wire wound around the end of the elastic cord as a helical crimp. The hook is generally U or J shaped.
There are many types of bungee cords that are available on the market, and these can be purchased with a wide variety of hooks. Many hooks are designed with safety and ease of use in mind. Some hooks are large and easy to hold. Some hooks have clasps designed to prevent the hook from becoming disengaged and accidentally recoiling while in use.
Some proposals show clasps and hooks that will not fit into tight places. For general bungee hooks, there are two main grip camps beside the classic U or J shape on a coil of wire: 1) a wide hook with included grasp, which is too wide to fit into tight tie-down access points and has an awkward relationship between the grip handle and the hook (really only suitable for big objects tied to exterior racks); and 2) a pull ring above the hook, which is impossible to use if tying to a blind or interior anchor point. All are relatively complex stamps or molded parts or complex wire or rod bends.
Hook ends for bungee cords are conventionally produced in two ways, differing in how the hook attaches to the elastic cord. One way uses a standard S-hook. One end of the S-hook travels through an opening at the end of the elastic cord, leaving the other end open to serve as a tie-down hook. A second way uses a helical coiled wire with the first coil just slightly larger than the diameter of the elastic cord and the rest of the three or four coils progressively larger to receive the folded-back or swedged cord end.
Safety problems in the use of such tie-downs have often been noted. Grasping the cord or one of the hooks and stretching the cord under tension sometimes results in the hook slipping loose or slipping away before the hook is engaged. The loose hook flying back toward the user, or away toward a bystander, can cause serious injury. Alternate grasping means for such a hook have been proposed both for safety and for ease of use, but the proposed solutions are either cumbersome, relatively fragile, relatively expensive to make, or incapable of attachment in socketed or other relatively inaccessible attachment points.
Many conventional fastening systems do not have a loop on or near their hooks. A loopless hook is difficult to attach to either another hook at the opposite end of the same bungee cord or to a hook of another bungee cord. In addition, many existing bungee cords have hooks that are permanently attached to an elastic cord, often using a proprietary technique that prevents a user from replacing the elastic cord.
What is needed is a grasping point or loop that is a simple bend addition to the classic U or J hook shape, where the loop is advantageously well behind the hook and desirably well to the side of the hook opening (on the closed side of the hook).